Monthly Archives: May 2019

Kent Stephenson is on a treadmill, working to put one foot in front of the other as a team of trainers helps guide his legs. There’s a harness holding him upright, but Stephenson is, in a sense, walking again — 10 years after a motocross accident left him paralyzed.

“Going off the face of a jump, my motor locked up and I tried to jump away from the bike. It didn’t work for me, I landed and cartwheeled, somersaults and everything,” Stephenson says. “I pretty much knew instantly that I couldn’t move my legs.”

Marios Papadopoulos and Samira Saadoun talk to Spinal News International about the ISCoPE trial, which aimed to develop techniques to continuously monitor the pressure of the spinal cord at the injury site in the intensive care unit (ICU). They conclude that monitoring from the injury site provides clinically important information, and note that they are now in the process of setting up a randomised controlled trial to test whether, compared with bony decompression, expansion duroplasty improves functional outcome after severe spinal cord injury.

CHAMBERLAIN, South Dakota—As a crane operator lifted Kristina Allen into a boat Friday morning in Chamberlain, the parapalegic veteran set sail for her second day of fishing on the Missouri River.

Allen was one of 41 veterans who had the opportunity to cast a line in the river and spend two days fishing, thanks to a group of volunteer fishermen who provided their boats, poles and tackle. The 16th annual fishing trip is coordinated through Paralyzed Veterans of America, a national organization that provides support services for military veterans who suffered a spinal cord injury or dysfunction.

Accessibility activist Rick Hansen has a new poster to show you. One with adjustable text at an eye level so people in wheelchairs can read it, text in multiple languages, a braille pad and even a recording of someone reading it.

Certain fitness regimens like CrossFit can be adapted to make them a better fit post-injury.

After a spinal cord injury, it’s no surprise that life changes. Even daily tasks, like getting dressed in the morning, may become more difficult. Depending on a patient’s injury, however, certain exercises can help those with spinal cord injuries improve function and adapt to using a wheelchair.

When it comes to an exercise program, those with spinal cord injuries should first consult their doctor and physical or occupational therapist to determine appropriate activities. After establishing a plan, patients can focus on increasing their strength and flexibility where mobile.

Janne Kouri raised a fist and rode his electric wheelchair through an arch of red, white and blue balloons set up between Georgetown’s Healy Gates on Wednesday, as dozens of friends and family members cheered his long-awaited arrival. When Kouri began creating the itinerary for his 2,900-mile, two-month ride to raise funds and awareness for people living with paralysis, a cross-country journey that began on March 11 at his home in Manhattan Beach, Calif., there was never a question it would end here.

“Georgetown has been a fantastic support and resource system for us, and it just lives in his heart every day,” said Kouri’s wife, Susan Moffat, who joined her husband in four cities during the ride and was waiting for him at the finish line. “At first I asked him, ‘Do you want to finish in New York?’ but it was always D.C., and it was always on the campus of Georgetown.”

In another major clinical breakthrough of the Walk Again Project, a nonprofit international consortium aimed at developing new neurorehabilitation protocols, technologies, and therapies for spinal cord injury, two patients with paraplegia regained the ability to walk with minimal assistance, via a fully non-invasive brain-machine interface that does not require the use of any invasive spinal cord surgical procedure. The results of this study appeared in the May 1 issue of Scientific Reports.

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